Learning from Saturn: Possibilities for Corporate Governance and Employee Relations

The last two decades of the twentieth century were a tumultuous time of innovation for business and labor. Perhaps the boldest and most far-reaching experiment in industry was the creation of the Saturn Corporation. Working together as partners, the UAW and General Motors built a new small car in Spring Hill, Tennessee, with American suppliers and American workers. Saturn's locally designed manufacturing system featured self-directed teams and the integration of union representatives into management's strategic and operational decision-making processes. Saul A. Rubinstein and Thomas A. Kochan have followed the Saturn story since its beginning in 1983. Through surveys as well as hundreds of interviews with company managers, union representatives, and employees, and with leaders of GM and the UAW, they trace the history of, and the lessons to be learned from, this "Different Kind of Company." The Saturn experiment embodied a new concept of labor-management relations, management, and organizational governance. Has it been a success or a failure? Is it relevant in the current industrial environment? What effect has it had on GM and the UAW? The authors resist overly simplistic conclusions; Saturn's strengths and limitations must be fairly assessed before the company's experience can provide lessons on the future of unions, labor-management relations, work organization, and corporate governance.

About the Author :
Thomas A. Kochan is the George Maverick Bunker Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Co-Director of the MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research. He is coauthor of Healing Together, Up in the Air, The Transformation of American Industrial Relations, and, with Thomas A. Kochan and Alexander J. S. Colvin,Labor Relations in a Globalizing World, all from Cornell, and author or editor of many other books.

Review :
"This is a jewel of a book: most informative, insightful and, in several respects, even endearing... This reviewer feels that the authors have achieved a scintillating success both in looking at this experiment openly, critically and in-depth on the basis of years of superb research, and in conveying their results and judgments in a most readable and lively language... Read what Rubinstein and Kochan have to say... is the best advice that can be given."-Jean Gerin-Lajoie, Ecole des hautes etudes commerciales. Relations Industrielles/Industrial Relations, 2001, Vol. 56, No. 4 "This book is about the innovative Saturn experiment, America's most thoroughgoing attempt to restructure the entire production and distribution as well as industrial relations systems... Learning from Saturn is an excellent window into the labor-management participation process. It provides a useful case study for instructional purposes as well. I have used the book twice in classes as the basis for a productive discussion about participation."-Michael H. Belzer, Wayne State University, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, October 2004, 58:1 "Learning From Saturn is a very nice and concise account of the Saturn process... Labor relations policymakers, both in the private and public sectors, should read this book."-Henry P. Guzda, Monthly Labor Review, August 2002 "For the past two decades there has been no experiment in labor-management relations more revolutionary, more path-breaking, and more critical than that forged by the UAW and General Motors at the Saturn plant in Tennessee. And there is no one who tells that story better than Saul Rubinstein and Tom Kochan. This superb book documents the trials and tribulations of this grand experiment, providing all of us with important insights not just about Saturn, but the emerging world of union-management partnerships in a global economy."-Barry Bluestone, coauthor of Negotiating the Future: A Labor Perspective on American Business "Saturn has pushed the envelope-creating extraordinarily high-quality cars through extraordinarily high levels of worker involvement. This book shows how this"different kind of organization" really functions and in the process raises urgent, deep questions about the future of US industry."-Paul S. Adler, University of Southern California